1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to retainers for constraining and retaining products on a shelf fixture within a compartment against ejection movement under influence of acceleration and deceleration forces and for the retaining of cold air within refrigerators.
2. Description of the Prior Art
With the growth of population in modern society and added leisure time, the attraction to recreational vehicles (RVs) for quality transportation and relaxation has come to the fore. The quality of the experience is often enhanced by easy access to food stuffs and beverages. To minimize deterioration in food stuffs and add to the attraction of beverages, it is important that the RV users have access to cold storage. Initially, it was popular to utilize so called coolers which could receive blocks or cubes of ice to maintain the beverage and food stuff cooled during the outings. These devices had the shortcoming that the food stuffs could only be maintained cold for a limited period of time and that the melting ice would often have deleterious affects on the food stuff and create an untidy situation within the confines of the boat, van or motor home.
In more recent times compact coolers have gained popularity. Coolers were initially cooled by heat exchange systems driven by liquid or gaseous fluids. More recently, such cooling refrigerators are powered by electrical power, either direct current or alternating current.
Inherent in the use of recreational vehicles are moving forces caused by the momentum of the vehicle during linear acceleration and deceleration, angular acceleration, and even tilting of the vehicle or of the road or marine vehicle during turns, tacking or jibing. Recreational vehicle refrigerators typically incorporate a limited number of horizontal shelves on which containers of food or beverages are stored. Barring any change in acceleration the containers tend to remain at rest on the shelf. When the vehicle carries the refrigerator through a change in magnitude of, or direction of velocity, the containers on the shelves tend to maintain their original velocity typically sliding across the shelf crashing against one another and against the sidewalls of the refrigerator or against the closed door or, if open, outwardly onto the floor of the house trailer or boat. This then often times results in crashing of the containers into one another and sometimes leading to spillage of food stuff and beverages or even breakage of fragile containers thereby to a great degree detracting from the quality of enjoyment. It is this problem to which is addressed by the present invention.
It is already been recognized that there is a need for containing articles from escape over the front edge of the horizontal shelves of cabinetry, refrigerators, medicine cabinets and the like. Examples of prior art work in this area include snap-on guards for children's high chair including tray portions for holding the food. The guards can be attached or detached from the tray and act as a guard to retain food, dishes, toys or the like on the tray. The guard is manufactured from a flexible transparent sheet of thin plastic material and must be of sufficient thickness to be self supporting. Snap-on fasteners are provided for securing the guard to the high chair. A device of this type is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 2,807,312 to Florian.
Other efforts have led to a proposal of a network of welded wire construction incorporating a peripheral frame and a plurality of transversely extending wire like rods. A shelf is provided with a guard assembly with upper and lower rod members having integral legs. A device of this type is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,137,249 to Postula.
Other work has led to the proposal of a magnetic guard rail for medicine chest cabinets to prevent accidental breakage of bottles contained on the cabinet shelves. This device includes a complex array of components, including plastic front posts, and integrally formed connecting ribs, body members, a magnetizeable shelf, cup shaped circular shelves and permanent magnets of a circular shape. The body members are held in the position on the shelf by the attraction force of the attached magnets. A device of this type is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,212,755 to Liss.
Hagerman in the U.S. Pat. No. 3,938,872 recognized the fact that the movement of recreational vehicles had a deleterious effect on items stored on the shelves of camper refrigerators, vans, trailers, mobile homes and various sailing or cruising boats. His solution was to provide a shelf retainer in the form of a plurality of elastic bands forming a network over the front edge of the shelves and carried from telescopical rods having their opposite ends biased longitudinally outwardly against the opposite sides of the refrigerator.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,827,574 to Craig shows a removable shelf edge and a plurality of clips extending from the lower edge of the shelf to hold a fence in place.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,752,324 to Moser shows a refrigerator shelf guard including a rigid fence-like arrangement of wires having a plurality of hooks hooked into spaces within the wire shelves of a refrigerator.
Other proposals have been made to provide laterally spaced upstanding posts on the front of shelving with hooks onto which a fence like retainer may be mounted. A device of this type is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,791,501 to Baldwin.
In our original application we disclosed a restraining net anchored to the side walls of a refrigerator or compartment by use of releasable anchors, each having at least one anchoring element embedded in or bonded to the wall or edge of the shelf to releasably hold a connector attached to the net. Upon using this embodiment, we noticed the items retained in the refrigerator stayed colder, indicating to us that this embodiment helps to keep items colder by restraining the loss of cold air and the ability of warmer air from the outside to enter, lending an additional purpose to the embodiment. While having utility, it was not obvious to us at the time that such restraining net could have an added benefit of retaining cold air within a refrigerator. Further, the benefit of this embodiment became more apparent upon the use of clear and solid sheet of material with thermal insulation characteristics in place of mesh material to further restrain cold air escaping from the refrigerated cabinet. Furthermore, this benefit became more enhanced if the sheet was attached and secured to the inside walls of the refrigerator using flaps to bridge the gap between sheet and the enclosure.
Upon further use of this new embodiment in refrigerators installed in both recreational vehicles and in homes, we discovered that the surface at the top of the internal compartments in these refrigerators varied greatly in uniformity and this negatively affected the ability of the device to be attached to the top of these compartments. It became apparent to us that the flaps across the top could not be attached to the compartment in many instances as we had previously designed. Furthermore, we discovered that a tension rod could be attached to or inserted through the top of the barrier sheet to hold the sheet in place securely across the inside compartment. Additionally, we realized that a second tension rod could be attached to or inserted through the sheet towards the bottom of the compartment along the bottom shelf just above the storage cabinets. This would allow for greater stabilization and security of the sheet within the compartment and would also allow us to not be required to secure the flaps along on the side of the sheet to be attached to the inside compartment of the refrigerator.
As cooling refrigerators have gained popularity in recreational vehicles, they tend to be used extensively by occupants and routinely opened and closed during use. Frequent opening to either put objects inside, take them out, or merely to view the items inside prior to taking any action causes a major loss of coldness inside the refrigerators causing food items to be exposed to higher temperatures further causing loss of freshness and a shorter duration of lifespan. This condition can also lead to increased energy requirements as the generator units of either gas-powered or electricity-driven refrigerators have to activate on a more frequent basis. This same condition of loss of cold air from frequent opening of refrigerators is also well known to be a problem facing users of household refrigerators. It is these problems which are addressed by the current invention.
It is already been recognized that there is a need for restraining cold air within all refrigerators in many different settings to prevent the loss and lifespan of perishables and the increased energy use such loss of cold air entails. Examples of known devices in this area include thermal barriers in cabinets between the refrigerator and the outside environment. Examples of such known devices are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,041,258 to Mitchell, 2,127,379 to Adams, 2,585,136 to Kuchler, 4,109,484 to Cunningham, 4,288,992 to Eliason, 4,296,792, 4,313,485, 4,420,027, and 4,550,760 to Gidge and Richard, 4,400,046 to Karashima, 4,429,548 to Layne, 5,431,490 to Edwards, and 6,783,199 to Parrott. Typically, these devices create thermal barriers by providing hanging vertical curtains, draped over horizontal curtains, or rigid drawers or doors. The majority of these devices are intended to isolate refrigerated chambers without storage doors.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,041,258 to Mitchell incorporated the use of a transparent curtain to provide an air-dam to be readily secured to a refrigerator in a manner to be easily detached. This curtain is made up of narrow strips hanging vertically in edge-to-edge relation allowing for a person to reach through these strips to access items on the shelves. While this does seem to provide its stated purpose of the restraint of cold air within the refrigerator, without a means of fastening these strips to any surface the hanging strips do not seem to have any ability to restrain objects.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,127,379 to Adams incorporated a transparent screen that could be unrolled from a spool at the bottom of the inside of the refrigerator and attached by means of a grappling device to one of the refrigerator shelves. While this would seem to preserve the cold air in the lower compartment, it was not a solution to keep cold air in the upper sections of the refrigerator from escaping and would not able to secure all items within the refrigerator from escaping. Furthermore, it used a celluloid material which would most likely be too flimsy to be of sufficient strength to retain objects on shelves.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,585,136 to Kuchler made use of a blind that could be raised up and down to view and retrieve items while retaining cold air inside a refrigerator. While it may have utility for that purpose, as in the case of U.S. Pat. No. 2,041,258 to Mitchell, it does not allow the user to easily see the items prior to raising the blind. It also does not provide an effective means for restraining objects on the shelves from falling out.
Further, these hanging curtain devices tend to be more suitable for open refrigerated cabinets lacking doors. Almost all RV and household commercial refrigerators have solid door units with interior storage shelves and compartments for items to be placed in and upon. According to the disclosure of U.S. Pat. No. 6,783,199 to Parrott, the previous hanging curtain devices known do not allow sufficient coldness to be distributed to the stored items held in the inside shelves and compartments of the refrigerator door. This problem was attempted to be remedied by U.S. Pat. No. 6,783,199 to Parrott by use of displacement apparatus attached to the inside of the door to contact and tilt some of the hanging curtain flaps to allow cold air to be distributed to the inside door shelves. However, the device described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,783,199 to Parrott does not provide the benefit of retaining the items upon the shelves of the cabinet or refrigerator.
It would be particularly useful to develop a device of that would be able to retain items upon the shelves of a compartment for use with refrigerators and cabinets in recreational vehicles during transit as these shelves and items are routinely exposed to instability. It would be even further useful if said device was constructed of insulating material to allow it to restrain cold air from escaping from these refrigerators in either RVs or other refrigerator applications in which the door is routinely opened. The more frequently a refrigerator door is opened, the greater the loss of cold air and this leads to higher temperatures in the internal storage area, which results in higher energy use required to maintain adequate coldness. It would also be important for this seal to be less than absolute and adjustable so as to allow cold air from the refrigerator to the inside door shelving and compartments so that items maintain proper coldness.